Paul, What Are You Up to in This World?
After my presumptuous question asked in the article and sermon last week – What is God up to in this world? – I lower my inquiry today and ask the same question of the apostle Paul. His answer is surprisingly similar. It is seen first in his letter to the Corinthians: This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God (1 Cor. 4:1-2). Years later when he wrote to the saints in Christ at Colossae, Paul identified himself as a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints (Col. 1:25-27). Then we come to his letter to saints in Ephesus, Paul begins by describing the mystery of God’s will as a plan/stewardship to unite all things in Christ (Eph. 1:9-10). He describes his part in that plan as the stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for you, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation … This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of promise in Christ through the gospel (Eph. 3:2-6).
Clearly, Paul saw himself as a steward of mysteries. What does it mean to be a steward? Webster says, “one employed in a large household or estate to manage domestic affairs,” This captures the meaning of that Greek word oikonomia, translated “plan” and “steward.” Jesus emphasized that idea in that mysterious passage that ended his public teaching: Who is the faithful and wise servant whom the master has set over his household? (Matt. 24:45-47). God in Christ is over his household. We are servants and stewards.
What about the mysteries? In novels and movies, Agatha Christie and Alfred Hitchcock are the masters. But for Paul the mystery is not a secretive “whodunit,” It is simply something that humans did not discover. God had to reveal it. Going back to Ezekiel’s version of God’s plan which was to join both groups of exiles; the stick of Israel and the stick of Judah as one stick (Ezek. 37:15-23). It is much more, says Paul. It is to join all exiles. God has revealed the mystery that in Christ both Jews and Gentiles are fellows. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free, but Christ is all and in all (Col. 3:11).
—Tom Yoakum